AJ Dunn Reads

  You by Caroline Kepnes Joe Goldberg seems innocuous. He works in a bookstore, lives in a crappy apartment, and lives a quiet, albeit eccentric, life. At least, that's what we're supposed to believe. When Guinevere Beck (just Beck) enters the bookstore, Joe becomes enamored with her flirty style and her taste in books. He learns her name and uses it to stalk her on social media. When he steals her phone he gains an all-access pass into Beck's life and uses it all to become the perfect man for her. Slowly and methodically, Joe positions himself to have Beck fall for him, reluctantly because of her own issues with men and sex. Eventually, when they are together at last, Joe manipulates her life and scrutinizes every nuance of anything she says in the digital world until Beck's secrets make Joe see her in a different light. There are casualties along the way. Beck's sometimes-boyfriend Benji and Peach, her secret-lesbian best friend who has her own agenda for Beck...

  Hard Times by Charles Dickens My first foray into the world of Dickens long after my reading of Great Expectations , Hard Times explores the ideas of morality, and viewing the world in either black and white terms or in shades of gray. It asks whether we should focus on reason in all things or let our hearts be our guide in many things. Set in the industrial mid-19th century, Hard Times mainly follows Tom and Louisa Gradgrind through their youth, tutored to believe in nothing but the facts, into adulthood where reality is confused by the heart conflicting with reason. Tom grows into a man interested more in drink and gambling than in hard work. He is a character of self-interest in-so-far as it works out to his advantage, such is the case when he uses a working class man to act as a cover for himself to rob the bank he works for. The man is blamed and Tom is silent, until it is discovered that Tom was the robber. His own life is eventually saved from accountability because of h...

  Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn Was Sharp Objects as good as Gone Girl ? No. Was it a twisty thriller that surprised me? Also, no. But it was a fast-paced read with interestingly disgusting characters that you love to hate, and ultimately a satisfying story. The novel follows reporter Camille Preaker who is sent back to her hometown to work on a story about two murdered little girls. Camille is forced to come to terms with her own childhood while she navigates the small town ghosts that haunt her. A cold and distant mother, a violent and fake little sister, an investigator who uses his charm to get into Camille's inner circle, and a town populated with girls and women who make you cringe and remember what being in high school was really like. Flynn pulls no punches with Sharp Objects . She's a master at opening up wounds we thought we ourselves had healed, using unflinching language to explore the disturbed psyches of girls and women fighting for their lives against one anoth...

  Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier Everyone seems to have read this book in the last year, owing no doubt to its film adaptation remake starring Armie Hammer. I figured I would give it a go and see if it lived up to the hype. Rebecca is the story of an unnamed young woman who marries the mysterious and wealthy Maxim de Winter and is swept away to his English mansion Manderley. Maxim's previous wife Rebecca died a few months before this second marriage for Maxim, and the book chronicles the new Mrs. de Winter's struggle with Rebecca's memory. Mrs. de Winter's real first name is never revealed, an interesting and obvious choice for Du Maurier to make, causing her to be a shadow, a ghost herself living at Manderley, always imagining conversations and scenarios, afraid to truly live herself. She is set against her husband's stoic silence and the indomitable housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who would love nothing more than to sabotage the marriage and to ruin Maxim's life. Thr...

  The Snowman by Jo Nesbø Another procedural thriller/mystery/suspense novel, in the vein of Tana French's In the Woods , The Snowman follows a grizzled detective as he searches for a serial killer whose hallmark is a snowman left at every crime scene. I admit I picked up this book because the protagonist's name is Harry Hole, and I'm a five-year-old in my head and found that name to be hilarious. It turned out to be a pretty good book. I wouldn't say it was a gripping tale, but it was interesting and had enough twists to keep me reading. Like Into the Woods , I knew who the killer in The Snowman was almost immediately, but I did not make the connection between the killer and the beginning of the book. The reason for the murders stemmed from that opening scene and it was fun learning about that at the end of the book. I have to say I am not a real fan of detective-type stories. They always seem to follow the same trope of the alcoholic detective who can't find lo...